Light days, bright future (yawp)

Weekend passed by doing some gardening, feeding kids and dogs and ... well, that was more or less it. Not much gaming, some moments of WoW with some moment of supervising the youngest son playing WoW. He had deserved his couple of hours of overpowered DK in Zangarmarsh by being a real superman in the garden, singlehandedly cutting a huge shrubbery down.

No elderberries. No NI!

What struck me over the one heroic I ran (and another I tried to run...) with my spriest is that the heroics are way more demanding than the normals. So much so that the gearing progression isn't too simple by any means. I know I have stated it earlier in WotLK that there wasn't any real road plan, but that was for the raiding through the heroics. Now the bar is set lower, making the progression not so linear from the normals up.

So either the heroics are too hard or the normals are too easy: there doesn't seem to be a middle ground, which makes the instance grind not so welcome anymore.

Then again, I'm closing the 250k gold again, without the daily stress of updating the sales or anything. I've been updating the AH every other day after the 48 hour limit expires, and I'm still pumping some nice income out of the system.

The big news in Finland was the general election held on Sunday, in which the Nationalist True Finnish party came out as the winner. It shares all the characteristics of all the Nationalist parties in history, being populistic, conservative, right-wing group of people. Add the confusion caused by this to the current problems of EU economics and you can see a nice and warming springtime for everyone. Light days and bright future. What ever the outcome from this is, the initial responses of people threatening to move out of the country due this vote is something I do not condone. Instead, I agree with this blog post linked here that it's time to stay, support the sanity and make sure this doesn't happen again.

Gnomore didn't get any time due to the nice weather, but I have something in store for this feller.

Laters!
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Weather takes it's toll (yawp)

Weekend was as uneventful as possible only because of the weather. The sun was shining all the time. And because I ran through all the episodes of The Event which is quite promising both in stories as in building the suspense. Then again, the way it portrays the President and his cohorts is very much the typical paranoid US type, which is quite decently confronted by the pacifistic - but brutal when needed - survivors of the vehicle crash. Not to give any spoilers, that is presented as such: my humble opinion is that you watch the show and try to get past the first three - four chaotic and prolonged episodes. The story starts to open way beyond that point and gives new promising ideas the further the story goes.

On the gameside I've been trying to survive in the Blight of the Immortals, a slow moving but extremely rewarding/annoying/frustrating/infuriating browser RTS, in which zombies are trying to conquer a fantasy continent and players are trying to fight the Blight off. In some settings even each other, but as a support player I've stuck with the co-op play. Lovely little game which shows that a good idea with even a decent presentation leads to a great experience.

I have more or less lost the zest over WoW, now even more than ever. After completing my own goals in the game I'm now only playing (and paying) it for Gnomore and The Three Stooges. I tried to run and have fun with my Shadow Priest, but noticed that its not so fun anymore. The only thing that matters - game wise - is the item level of the gear, and even though you might find a green which is better than you are wearing as blue, the item level of the green is so low that it blocks your progress. Stupid thing is that it's enough to have the higher level gear in your backpack to make your scores high enough.

Also the disparity of the normals versus heroic is daunting. Whereas I was easily in the high end of the damage meters, I'm now at the lowest ones even though I generate more points in dps than earlier. Sure, I'm competing with the people in raid level gear in blues and greens, but that is not the point: this disparity causes the group to force kicks even though I might know the encounter, not stand in the bad and keep on delivering, but not being able to break the magic m&s wall of not exceeding tank dps.

Gnomore project also got a hit in my interest as someone linked a forum post in the US general forums where someone stated that they had levelled a NE druid from naught to cap without killing anything nor doing any quests. All I can say is that the only requirement is to have time and will to sit by the computer, as in everything you can do in WoW. And that druid is the easiest one to go pacifist with, taking into the account the possibility to sneak and gather stuff in travel forms.

But I did get Gnomore into a place where he really shouldn't have gone. More of that later this week.

Godspeed!
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Never so scared (yawp)

It seems that the nature is doing it's best - and worst - to make sure that my time at the computer, playing games to be more precise, is coming to end. Or at least very restricted. You see, the winter has been very snowy, resulting quite a lot of - now melting - snow. Which has a nice weight to volume ratio as of now, where it earlier was just fluffy lovely thing.

This has caused some nice structural difficulties to out sauna cabin, which has been built at the golden 70's, and has a surprisingly stupid roof construct. You see, the roof is flat. And yes, the drainage pipes are frozen solid. And yes, the water is weighing a ton on a roof where there is also ice tearing through the top material.

In short, it's spring and the roof is leaking. That's going to be my passtime after work from now on...

The games I've played... oh my. Like I reported earlier, I got my first ever love letter hate mail concerned merchant whisper from a 'gem magnate' on the server. The fuzzy tinges passed by right after I had logged in with my spriest and ran through some normals at level cap. Oh, bore. If I score among the best of the dps with less than reasonable gear, then I'm doing it wrong. In just one group out of five I ran I was dumped into the bottom of the roster, but it was redeemed as the rest of the group noticed they had logged into a normal by 'accident' instead of a heroic. My item level was at least 30 points lower than their...

Gnomore has now two sessions of pictorial available for crafting into posts, and I feel I've gotten good winds under him. More to come, for sure

Visited Rift, too, and finished the first part of the World Event. Nothing much to report except that I now remember again how I like the PvP while at the lower part of the level bracket. First you can't even get any damage on the higher ones (despite the 'tuning up') and secondly you are tossed around like a ragdoll. Still I had to run warfronts just for the sake of it. In the first one I got a nice revelation, though. I was wondering why my skills were greyed out on my UI, as I couldn't even get my buffs up. Never the less, I was beating some Guardian scum to dust with the aid of another player when I accidentally pulled up my souls... only to notice that the points had been resetted due to the recent patch!

Note to self: always read the messages which pop on screen after login.

The main attraction (besides Planescape: Torment and Crossfire) was, however, Penumbra: Overture. How on Earth have I been able to dismiss this game?!

More importantly, how on Earth/Telara/Azeroth/Sigil I was introduced to the game by my son!?

In a way, if MMO's are taking up too much time on single session, don't even think about taking up Penumbra or Amnesia from the same company. You either get so scared you don't want to see the games ever again, or you just cannot quit before checking behind the next turn of the tunnel... or the next door... or

oh my god... they found me... THE HAND!!

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I'm done with it (yawp)

In addition to that, my first character made it to the lackluster 85, being my shadowpriest Pupunen. After a couple of Halls of Origination PUGs (and failed Tol'Vir and some other) it dawned to me that either spriest is very much overpowered or I play my ilevel319 mix-match spec pretty well or the PUGs are just littered with people who really do not how to play (says a lot about the people PUGging). Why?, you may ask. Because I was all the time in the first or the second place, and the ones passing me obviously had quite a lot higher ilevel. I checked the ilevel occasionally and the best/worst case was that one warlock who pulled about half of my dps with ilevel of 345 or something: considerably better than my gear, gemmed and enchanted (tell tale signs of shining and twinking gear...), while mine was not even gem slots and without enchants (as I haven't bothered yet).

So two goals reached almost simultaneously.

Gnomore got just one level and moved on to Stonetalon. Knowing how crappy that place is in travel wise, I think he'll turn to the Eastern Kingdoms for a while, say, next 5 levels. If not more but to gain some other archeological finds than Night Elf stuff.

While I'm at it, I may as well analyze the current motivation. With the burden of having promised the 250k cap, I have next to no motivation to play WoW. I remember this same feeling from springs of earlier years, too, and I put it into the amount of sun/daylight. The more daylight there is, the less I want to sit inside and play. It seems that the same thing is happening all around the blogosphere, creating the summertime blues.

However... Rift is still there, something I haven't tabbed for a while. Still need that one Iron Tombs run to get the quests done and then it's up to the Stonefields and new 'quest' areas for rifts and monsters. Kind of waiting for that to be able to play for my pleasure rather than just to show it can be done.

What my gaming will consist from now on in WoW is Gnomore (naturally) and the Three Stooges. Nothing more I want to put my time into, even though there are multiple time sinks to waste it all to: reputation sinks, cooking and fishing dailies, overall dailies and collecting stuff. Sorry, Blizzard, did that in Wrath of the Lich King, why do it again?

I'm done with it. How about you?

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Cap is closing (yawp)

What do you know? I was planning on playing a good dose of Rift, but ended up playing my Shadow Priest Pupunen through Uldum. Still just a bit short of dinging level 85 she's in the middle of the Harrison Jones quest chains, just bested that obnoxious Schnottz.

On the AH side I'm also closing on with the former cap - and my own goal. I'm sitting on 222 327g on my three main money crafting characters, of whom the jewelcrafter/alchemist is currently making the most of the profit. I was about to toss my gloves out of the ring earlier this week, when the Obsidium Shuffle suddenly seemed to get borked by few factors: excessive and cheap ore and incredibly low enchant mat prices, combined with just barely above cut and vendor prices of the cuts. The shuffle was for a short moment a balancing act between work and profit, until I noticed that the rare cuts had started to move. And the way they moved... Both cut and uncut rares are going now faster than I can restock them in the AH, most probably because I don't want to put too many in at a time. 5 at a time is enough for me, and over the weekend this has proved to be a good way because the prices have increased after each posing cycle.

About those Uldum quests. I have earlier read very excited posts about the smash the pygmies or gnomebliteration quests and quite honestly speaking, they were stupid and pointless. That's my opinion, though, but I do not see anything funny in smashing those pygmies with a huge mace or rolling over gnomes in a fusion reaction ball. Maybe I've lost my sense of WoW humour.

The other point I noticed was within the Harrison Jones quests. The first part was great, just the right spirit after you had killed the ten foozles and collected the rare kahookie. But the second one... IMO it just proves that Blizzard isn't concerned over the original basic fantasy status of WoW: instead they want to mix and mash everything in (like the goblin starter area, yuch) and basically break the whole setting they have been staging for the last six years. The Schnottz army wasn't any generic fantasy anymore, it was pulp fiction era fantasy. And as such it is way out of place in generic fantasy setting. Nazies shooting with smg's... Fo'hickles' sake!

Though I have to admit that some of the references to the Indiana Jones movies were pretty well done and some a bit too obviously 'overacted', the story flowed decently on rails. Never the less, I enjoyed the Ramkahen storyline more, with the way the designers have used their tools to the max, making a real 'you are the hero to save us' feel in the game. But is this the MMO way to do it? Or single player way?

Gnomore got some love, too, and I was really, honestly and genuinely surprised how many non-violent quests there are in Ashenvale! Not even through with all of them yet, and I managed to get two levels on him. He is a bit of a show off nowadays, but more of that later on.

All in all, quite a weekend. On the other side, the weekend game time will get less after this: spring is advancing, dogs have to get some exercise (I have to get some exercise, too!) and family issues pending.

Real life first. To the cap.

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Grouping away (yawp)

I was sitting on 187.208 gold on my four alliance characters in WoW this morning. That's just a bit over 25k profit over the week, which is not shabby by any means, considering how little I pay attention to the detail and profit in general. I may well craft a dozen glyphs to sell at 30g, but end up selling them at 8g, below costs. Mostly out of spite, because no-one else will sell at that time, either.

What has brought this up is simply the obsidium shuffle and the way the cut rares have started to roll out. The Shadowspirit diamonds (the meta gems) are going steadily, but the price range for them is fluctuating quite a lot. The prices may easily go from 168g on one day to 327g on another, and so far I haven't been able to pinpoint the pattern. Perhaps it is connected to the raid days, but I'm not totally sure.

Gnomore got some love over the weekend, a couple of levels up and a very, very interesting encounter with the Archeological dig sites: He ran from one end of an area to another between two sites which kept popping up in sequence. This has changed the way I play Gnomore considerably, hunting for the dig sites rather than gathering nodes. But in the end, this results less deaths, which is nice.

Rift. I've spent some very interesting time in Rift, not only because it is a new game, or because it's beautiful. Mainly because of the guild I got into and the people in there. Also the people within the game - if you shut the general chat off - are very nice and co-operative, something you do not find in WoW in the levelling areas anymore.

The most interesting aspect I encountered was the ease of grouping meaningfully. I was just doing quests and gathering (this follows me from Gnomore for sure...) and I came to the quests leading to the Iron Fort, a big fortress from which the big bad evil warlord was originally from. The quests are quite doable as solo, and there is no need for grouping, but the kill 10 of these, 12 of those and 8 of them quests mount up to some serious killing. So... I grouped with one cleric on the same quests. Soon another player character joined and before I noticed, there were eight of us doing the same quests, running from one tower to another, from tower to altars around the fort and so on.

And it was bleeding fun. Everyone was working towards their own, but at the same time common, aims and ends, chatting about the progress of the quest and having slight RP on the side.

In the end, everyone thanked for the group before splitting and about an hour had passed: it was like an open mini-instance in WoW.

The additional reward for doing the quests in group? Nothing, except getting them done faster than alone, and with style.

I think this one instance shows how a small thought on the social availability of grouping can change the experience quite considerably, and as the players realize more the possibilities of this open grouping, Rift play experience may well change to something we've never seen before. Social design at work, really.

All in all, a fun weekend with the games. With a lot to write about over the week, too.
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Nothing to report (yawp)

That must have been one of the worst (gaming) weekends in a long time. In addition to that, I had the lousiest nights for a long time due to the crickets we are giving to our pet tarantula. Those darn creatures were chirping the nights away, all the way from Thursday and most probably till unforseen future. Depends on how our Mexican Fireleg Tarantula is going to treat them: as food or as companions.

First things first. Due to some crappy decisions on the AH front, the balances tipped. Add to that the fact that I ended up purchasing two of the new meta recipes as well as expand the storage space on my mule by purchasing additional guild bank slot. One to go still, and I'm not using the newest one to the fullest yet. However, despite all the losses and very few gains, the final balance this morning was 161.735, which is only 1.7k less than last week. At the same time I have stockpiled quite a pile of Obsidium Ore for the shuffle at very low prices. So in addition to making some 16k profit to cover the recipes and bank tab, I have also increased my assets pretty considerably.

Still the shuffle is the majority of the income, glyphs bringing the basic daily income still. As it happens, the alchemy is becoming a viable income again, as the materials for the flasks and potions are becoming more reasonably priced. Transmuting is still there, though, as it has always been, as it is a part of the effective Ore Shuffle (prospect, cut/vendor, DE and transmute being the main aspects).

Due to the sporadicality of my free time over the weekend, I didn't get any real big sessions to run. A couple of better ones were spend in Rift, where my mage Copraf is making steady progress by closing rifts, killing invasions and trying to do some quests in the meanwhile. I also took Copraf 'out there' to explore areas I definitely shouldn't have been in, and got - to my surprise - a shard first achievement for an artifact I found. Exploration pays in the game, though not for long. It was fun, though, to be travelling in an area which is meant for characters at least 20 or more levels higher, where every step had to be thought out pretty much down to a spot to be able to proceed. Definitely going to do the same on the northern territories soon.

Which leads to the major problem: I didn't have my weekly Gnomore session. There are only two viable options: to try to see if I can do it today or to skip it for the week. I'm pretty much inclined to the latter, but we'll see how I feel later.

That's all folks for the weekend recap. Rift is a great game, WoW is still eating my time and I think I've found the guild I've been searching for - in Rift, not in WoW.

It's strange how life sometimes treats you and your gaming, eh?
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Clean slate no more (yawp)

Like I have tweeted every now and then: I QUIT! That summarizes the weekend, totally. That pointing to WoW, Rift - which had it's 7th beta and I was playing that, too - not being in question.

Ok, that out, we can proceed according the plan. I have accumulated 163.447g, which means I have gained a bit over 11k over the week. Which is in fact a fault assumption, as I went and purchased a certain new meta recipe for 17.5k in hopes of making some money out of the cut. This was the first reason I want to quit: it failed miserably, and instead of making almost 30k plus I netted only 11k.

The prices of Obsidium and Elementium Ore have risen noticeably over the last week, their supply has diminished from the original and this results in the common and rare raw gems being less and less available. This should count as rising prices, but no. The only one worth anything is the gem required for the daily, the price of Hypnotic Dust and Greater Celestial Dust have gone very low so the disenchanting route is not as profitable as it used to be: in normal situation it should be the other way around. In lack of supply the prices should go up!

Anyhow, I have split my time in between my main server and the server my son is playing. He took up on a Deathknight and has this uncanny habit of spending all the money accumulated on the character in few poorly placed purchases. Granted, he's only 10 with next to no understanding on the English language, but still he's topping the DPS in the dungeons he goes to with LFD tool.

So I took on generating him enough money to get him the flying mount and both skills: the artisan riding needed for flying in Outlands and the Old World flying. The server is very much different from the one I'm in, but the result was that as this toon was levelling his gathering skills from naught, he finally got about 700g in two days to pay for his flying. That was the great end for the weekend.

What amazed me over the weekend is the fact that there are recipes in the game which are not available in the game anymore. Like the already rare pattern of Deviate Scale Belt or the cooking recipe Soothing Turtle Bisque which you could get only through a quest. You just cannot get them from the game anywhere, except from AH in the lucky shot when someone happens to post them in. Usually the prices should be outrageous, like 100k or more, but that depends on the server.

The amazing part is this: you can still get those recipes from AH for as low as 60g, 10g or even as low as 15s if you're lucky. That's because there is nothing in the tooltip telling that the recipe is not available in the game anymore!

And that's not all that is missing from the tooltips. The major I QUIT thing happened when I was happily adventuring with Gnomore. This one quest in Dun Morogh requires you to free dwarves from icy tombs they have been stuck in by some elementals. So I started the quest, banging the tombs to smithereens and found out that the bloody icy tombs count as creatures! So I lost the reason to level Gnomore any further for his "creatures killed" count states six (6) killed, unspecified, creatures.

There was nothing warning about this, nothing pointing out that this would count as a kill and I really feel that this bloody game mechanics have failed me and my project. I'm not starting over, so I'm on the verge of quitting the project and I'm strongly contemplating quitting WoW except for the three stooges evenings.

What's the point, if the game screws you in the eye at every turn, one way or another?

Should I keep on going with Gnomore in spite of this set back?
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Hits and misses for Valentines (yawp)

What a bewildering and confusing weekend.

First of all, a market report: my alliance toons on my main server are sitting on 151.671g, which is more or less spot on +30k to the one I had last week. All this from some enchants, glyphs and Obsidium shuffle. What is interesting is the development of Obsidium Ore stack prices: I've been purchasing them at average price of 72g per stack over the week (even for 57g at one point), but now the stack price is over 100g. This makes the shuffle a bit more challenging, but not a shabby income in any case. To add some insult to this injury, I haven't been utilizing the shuffle to the fullest: I still have almost all rare gems in my AH, so if the bad comes worse, I can still sell them either raw, cut or even transmute them to Shadowspirit Diamonds and sell them on nice profit this way.

As 4.0.6 introduced the new meta recipes, the gem market has gone wild and the raw uncommon gems have sold at very interesting prices. Most probably due to the alchemists transmuting everything to Shadowspirit Diamonds, which - naturally - have lost a good chunk of their price due to increased supply.

The other hit I had was when I travelled to Dalaran with my alchemist/jeweller to obtain my first (and with that price the only) Ring of Kirin Tor (Ouch! 7k gone in the wind!). As I was just about to leave and in fact had started my hearthstone, I noticed that the Kaluak Fishing Derby just started. While I have never taken part of any of the Fishing Events in the game, I decided to pop in and see what comes. So I swooped down from Dalaran, headed to the river and started fishing from the schools of fish. I was on my third school, after I had cast about twelve times, when I got the price fish. As the winned hadn't been announced, I flew up and...

I won the Derby! On my first ever try I came, saw and won!

Beginners luck, I just didn't even realize the meaning of the achievement. I just picked the nice account bound levelling ring and was just hearthing out when the first congratulations came from a druid who just missed returning the fish by few seconds. As I got back to Stormwind, I got two whispers: one asking what was my fishing skill (it was 318+20 from the fishing rod) and where I had gotten the fish. The other one was a lengthy discussion with a druid who had been hunting for the achievement for a long time and still couldn't understand how I had won. When I finally got him realize that it wasn't the skill (he had all the best fishing gear, capped fishing and even all fishing enchants on plus the lure!), he thanked me twice and off we went. It was at this point that it really dawned on me: friggen A, I had won the Fishing Derby!

The PUG runs of the weekend were all from the lousy side. With my druid at level 64 the few instances I ran were all in Coilfang and the tanks were from all over the scale. One DK who really didn't know what he was doing, running around in Frost Presence and claiming to be a tank. Another - again DK - who was otherwise performing great, but running ahead of the group and not paying attention whether the healer was around or not - he learned the lesson after the second time HE died and the rest of the group stayed alive. And a tankadin, who worked like a thought: thoughtful, checked - silently - that everything was ok and pulled the mobs in orderly fashion. The rest were something not worth mentioning, strong silent groups with no social interaction.

The social stuff got the final draw of the week from a lv72 DK who whispered to my DK who was just purchasing the auction house dry of Obsidium Ore. He started very directly, asking what was my DPS and rotation for my Unholy spec. After I answered, he continued that where I had gotten the rotation from. After I answered... no further contact. No thanks, no okies, no nothing.

No manners.

Which leads to Gnomore. I had a blast, even though he didn't break the magical level 20 yet. Explored the Redridge Valley area and found out that the game definitely is bugging me with all the rares when I cannot kill them.

Anyhow, today being the Valentines Day, I present you the Valentines Greetings ala Blizzard.

For those not too shy, the next one without the censoring speech bubble...

And finally, the last one from the behind, to make the point even clearer.

Happy Valentines to you all admiring Blizzards way of appreciating good taste and common decency!
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Lost my appetite (yawp)

Oh, well, another weekend with Rift Beta, in which I spent only a short moment. Instead, I plunged into the AH game in WoW and had - almost as short - moment with Gnomore.

Positives first: I broke 100k gold in Sunday, 121 312g this morning to be exact. This makes it about 50k in less than three weeks, not to mention all the materials I've been stockpiling and have waiting for processing on my three main crafters. Mind you, I'm not doing this as my main attraction (though it seems that way): I have enough time to pull a thing in here and another there, but not enough to plunge into a LFD PUG or quest meaningfully in the new areas.

Gnomore hit level 17 and I had some strange things to happen... All in all, I noticed that I have very hard time in logging into Gnomore because the playing is pretty intense. The general mindset I have on this toon is very, very different from the gung-ho mentality I have with other toons. In addition to that, anyone claiming that it's hard to get any money as a starting character can look at themselves: Gnomore at level 17 has 444g only through gathering professions and selling the materials in AH. Normal character has quest rewards and assorted loot to sell, too, so they should have even more at level 20. Definitely enough at higher levels despite the increasing skill costs. So hush and go loot something, like I tend to say to beggars.

Which brings us to the not so positive things. Rift is one fine game, but as it happens, the players are drifters from other - not so great - games. They bring their limitations, expectations and views along with them, most notably the spam in the chatrooms about how Rift is this and that other game is so much better and so on.

I learned a few things about myself and my playstyle in one encounter in Rift. It effectively took my appetite for future betas, and I really honestly began to doubt if I really want to be part of the Rift community. Then again, the community consists of players, and if I'm out, the community will be less me.

I was exploring with my level 17 Pyro/Archon/Ele in the second Defiant area, Stone-something. It's an area for levels 18 upwards (I think, the mobs are that range), so I was really exploring an area where no sensible player would go at that stage. My experience with Gnomore however has lead me into this, to challenge the odds and see how far I can trek.

Anyhow, I came to the settlement in there and as it happens there was a cave nearby, behind a cathedral of sorts. I sneaked past a couple of groups of mobs and got into the cave. There was a party of two in, killing mobs and by a custom I launched my - due to level difference - feeble fireballs into the mobs. Yup, the mobs were level 24, seven levels above my toon, so I barely made an odd point or two damage here and there. My mistake was that I wasn't paying attention to the chat at that point, as there was something said that was probably aimed at me.

You see, one of the pair said that "you should stop leeching" and "ok, kill the next ones yourself" and I didn't understand a)who was saying that, b)to whom it was said to and c)what it was related to. Turned out that it was meant to me and that I was leeching the pair doing the 'hard work'.

Now color me pink and call me Daisy, but I understand leeching to be something involving gaining something from others hard work. Like Larísa of the Pink Pigtail Inn, when she leeched the Headless Horseman pumpkin event: she did it because the game froze and she just got the reward from other players work. It's the same as playing WoW Battlegrounds and AFKing to get the points for it, doing nothing.

Leeching is to me to gain something from others, doing nothing yourself. In this case, I was doing (even though it was in vain) and I wasn't gaining anything as the mobs were normal world mobs and there was no group event around.

When I pointed out and challenged this view of the vocal person in the pair I was told the following:
* It is rude to leech - of course, I wouldn't approve it
* I was leeching because I wasn't contributing - I was contributing to the best of my ability
* That point or two was hardly contributing, I shouldn't be here - Oh...
* At that level I shouldn't have even been there - ...
* Because I didn't ask, I was rude, impolite and leeching.

Anyone knowing me ingame knows I'm very polite, treat even the jerks with utmost respect and correctness and very seldom use any derogatory terms, especially with strangers like this.

In the end, I took the pounding of one mob in the cave, gave the vocal one the satisfaction of seeing me fail like that (really) and trekked even further into the zone after resurrecting myself and healing.

But I felt very bad about the whole incident. Had I misunderstood something? Was I really acting improperly and rudely? Am I to be confined to the 'safe and proper' areas for questing?

So I logged out after taking a soul portal to Meridien and didn't even look back to Rift after that.

Goes to show how one rotten experience can spoil the whole fun for you. I wonder how a newcomer to any MMO will react or feel when s/he encounters the "L2P NOOB" wall of scream in the first group event s/he takes part in...

Was I really playing it wrong?

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Wasted time and effort (yawp)

I have made a mistake. I have dipped my feet into the Grand Game.

I'm talking about the AH game, of course. It's available to all, each and everyone, it's just as equally mean and demanding to all and the success is totally depending on yourself and your understanding of the market. Information.

Last week I said that I found my initial dip kind of too easy. Considering I don't have a single capped crafting toon I still managed to reap about 10k profit over the week, mainly from the severely overpriced prime and major glyphs which still sold like Coca-Cola. Nice play, considering my inscription toon is capped at 375 and not coming up from there anytime soon.

Of course I had to plunge myself into the depths after that. I purchased the cards to build the Hurricane Deck (Darkmoon cards of the Winds persuasion, that is). The deck cost me - done this way from the cheapest cards in the market - some 17k, while they were sold at 24k. Nice, if that had only materialized: the price of the deck plummeted over the weekend down to 18k and AH has now quite a few of them on sale.

On the bright side, I'm almost back where I started, money wise, meaning that I have managed to do about 20k in a bit over a week. Last I checked I had done 40k sales, meaning that my profit-% is around 50%.

Not bad. We'll see where this takes us when I get my system running.

On the play side, my main toons have been frozen in time. Laiskajaakko is taken out of the naphtalene only for the Brothers, my spriest is working on tailoring and enchanting occasionally and DK is just sitting there, doing some jewelcrafting once in a while. The main toon I'm playing currently is my banker, a restoration druid who runs a random every now and then if time permits. (My typical AH run takes about a hour with checking mail, restocking, reposting and specified scanning).

Now to heal in the Outlands dungeons has become the 'favourite' pass time for this toon: maybe it's the effect of Gnomore, but I just cannot take on doing the killing quests with this one, either. The fighting part of most of the quests just puts me off and as a resto druid the options are pretty limited. I'm lazy, I don't want to change gear or spec to accommodate the questing, so I just hit the LFD button and wait for the group.

Glad to say, as a healer it is almost immediate, even in the levelling dungeons. It seems that even though the healer/hybrid classes are predominant in the groups, none of them are willing to make the switch either. Levelling as dps in questing is so much more convenient and faster than as a healer, so I fully understand them.

However, being a pure healer brings interesting discussions in groups. It's always the healer's fault when something bad happens, and it doesn't matter how you explain the thing. In this one PUG there was a pretty vocal warlock, who insisted on pulling mobs in chain: the tank pally was doing his best to contain the aggro and had something wrong in his set up. In short, it caused a wipe (Hellfire Citadel, the bigger area after the tunnel): he pulled the whole area, some 20 or so mobs and ran first out of line of sight, then out of my range. As the only heal I can cast while running is Rejuvenation, a weak HoT, it wasn't enough to contain the damage.

This warlock started on nagging on the healer (didn't even take time to write a name there), how druids are so OP at this level (62) in these dungeons and how the healer did a sucky job. In my polite manner I explained how I can't do a thing if I'm not in the range or if I'm forced to move, and told him to check the facts, STFU and concentrate on his dps.

What a change in tone. He didn't even mention healing after that, pointed out that the tank had wrong sigil (or whatever the paladins have) on and generally thanked the healer at the end. It seems no-one had said anything against him, ever, and the first time someone paid any attention was now as he was shown where he was standing.

Anyhow, levelling up through the LFD is very interesting. You really cannot regard the rest of the group as being even a lousy AI, and you really have to adapt to how the tank - dps co-operation plays. I don't remember ever having to take other players into account as much as tank or dps as I have to do as a healer, so while playing a healer while levelling is demanding, it's also the most interesting part for me.

Pretty nice counter activity to the static AH grind, really.

Gnomore got a few hours, too, mounting up to lv16. LFD opened up, but the main interest is in the mount at lv20. The Darkshore has changed all for the best, but as the final steps of the main quests require killing, they are left unfinished: also the easter egg for two achivements requires some slaughter, so the latter one remains un-earned. Which really pisses me off.

This for now. I'll keep my stocks up and may even tell about my AH stories.

C out
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Experimenting (yawp)

Spent my weekend involved in AH experimenting. To such a degree that I only had a very, very short stint on Gnomore.

The experimentation had three aspects: inscription, tailoring and jewelcrafting. Surprisingly that Tailoring returned the invest in the least amount of time. Maybe my lucky shot in purchasing Embersilk at low prices and selling Embersilk Bags at the right price had something to do with that, but there were also several sales on some low level, cheap to do things, which have pretty interesting prices in AH.

Jewelcrafting seems to be worth every dime, too. Old - WotLK era - normal and epic gems sell with nice profits, with a steady flow of certain types. On the positive side, the supply seems to be pretty decent, too, so to purchase an uncut epic and selling it as cut one you may well profit over 50g. Also the normals have gone up in prices and make a decent income.

The odd bastard child which everyone loves or hates is Inscription. There are as many guides on how to work on this market and how to make it work that you can just choose your own way with them. Your mileage may wary, as they say, and what works for others may not work for you. The worst part of working in Glyphs is the fact that you cannot really start by small and grow from there. Or you can, but then you are just betting on certain glyphs to be best sellers with good profits rather than fishing with a proper net.

So the experiment in Inscription was taken in two steps: bet on the high margin glyphs to gain some income and expand to wider set of glyphs as the money starts to flow. The most interesting part of the whole exercise was the play with the ingredient prices: the herb to pigment to ink game is definitely more interesting than posting and cancelling the glyphs, over and again. From time to time it was faster in profit way to just sell the inks at pretty high prices, and as long as the price of Cataclysm herbs stays high, you can really play with the lower tier herbs quite a lot: it's not profitable to go and use the Blackfallow inks to purchase the lesser ones, yet.

All in all, tailoring made a couple of thousand overnight, Jewelcrafting about the same, both in profit. Inscription just got profitable over the weekend, with about 300 glyphs on sale.

What made it interesting as an experiment is the fact that none of those tradeskills are anywhere near skill level 500, even. Inscription is now capped on my banker at 375, so I'm effectively out of the high end meddling, but I'm still making quite a decent income with it.

Too bad poor Gnomore had to suffer from this. But you know, when the game sucks you into doing something, there is next to nothing you can do.

C out

When I get on a side tracked... (yawp)

What a weekend. Nothing I planned really happened, but a lot of other things did.

I planned on putting my main, warrior tank, on exp freeze and play through Mt.Hyjal and Vashj'ir, play some Gnomore to get him to LFD level range and do some crafting on my priest.

Did next to none of them.

Instead, for some curious reason, I played mostly with my banker (yikes!) as he was already in the level range for Blackrock extravaganza. The old raid instances have been 'lowered' to random 5 mans and Copramo spent most of the time in there, healing the heck out of ragtag groups, most of which didn't even know where they were. Heck, I didn't know most of the time, and as I mostly got picked up by a group which had lost their healer, I didn't even get the big picture of the place!

What was the most curious about this experience is something worth discussing about. Sure, all the high up "been-there-since-early-beta" people who have grinded (ground?) Blackrock as a raid instance way before Burning Crusade came out know the place like the bottoms of their (often forgotten) pockets. But there are an amazing number of players who have never, ever set their foot in the instances. And I mean ever. Myself included.

Especially Blackrock Depths is a dumbfounding whole as a 5 man instance: the LFD loading screen doesn't tell which part you should be doing. At one run it was just one boss (right,  from the start!), on another we had to plunge through majority of the map to get to the boss needed (another one!) and so on. I'm SO confused on which boss is the one the group should go and smack, and I'm definitely not the only one!

Blackrock Spire is almost as bad, except that there you have more linear approach. But... the LFD doesn't tell which one of the two you should go and complete! And you get quests for both from the questgiver conveniently inside the entrance - just in range of the first mobs, which is a bit of a design flaw in it's own.

It's nice they did this and 'force' the new players to go through the hellish depths of Blackrock Mountain while levelling, as the story will later on bring them back to Blackrock Caverns and all. But it would be nice to know which part or which bosses you are supposed to kill before you start: there was this one tank who said that he'd been in Blackrock for over two hours and he just wanted to finish the instance. He had had the whole group changed twice over and they hadn't found the boss they were supposed to kill for the dungeon to finish. Needles to say, we found it and one shotted it.

It was very nice, though, to find myself in the queue for the Burning Crusade instances at level 58 and after that one run (they were never this easy back when BC launched!!!) he was lv59. One to go and the sky is ours!

Of course, I had to dedicate some time to Gnomore, too. It takes about one hour for a level with this bugger, so the progress is very slow. It's especially rewarding, when you see a new character level from 5 to 15 in the same time it takes you from 11 to 13 yourself... and that newcomer has way better gear at that point.

C out
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Public Service and yawp

For the next two weeks I will not be responsible for the blog. Due to work reasons I will be around Europe, and not able to play nor write.

That was the announcement part. Now some reflections over last weekend.

- I will not make the Old World Loremaster title: I have effectively avoided my main character for several days now, and about 200 quests are piling into a pile which cannot be done in time. Too bad.
- I have taken a step on the dark side again: my horde toons. Where as in Alliance, the bickering, name calling and rude behaviour started at around lv40, in horde it started already around lv33. Tank didn't do that, dps didn't do that and everyone was merry when the group disbanded. Not once or twice, but every other group does the same.
- How easy it is to be a ranged dps! No worries like healer or tank have, just blast away and keep your aggro below the tank. Then again, some dps do not understand this and blame the tank.
- How difficult is it to handle runners? Some tanks do not get this at lower levels and instead of preparing for a runner and pulling back towards the 'safe area' where the group came from - thus buying more time to deal with the runners - they push the pulls forward and blame the dps for not killing the mobs in time.
- Oh what crap the AoE damage has become...
- Levelling through randoms is way too fast. The worst part is the fact that you over level your gear and do not get decent replacements fast enough. My lv35 mage is still wearing her lv28 stuff and that's not unique.
- and levelling the gathering professions... My druid is running lv45 randoms while still roaming in lv26-31 areas for herbs... not being able to gather from the instances!
- Why can't there be a possibility to gather a node which is - say - 5-8 points above your skill? That way you could spend some time at a node knowing that you MAY get it if you're lucky. Now you are tied to an arbitrary number below which you cannot even try to pick the bloody flower.

That's all for now. I had an existential walk on Sunday, wondering why I'm playing at all, what am I thinking I'm getting from playing and what the hell am I trying to replace with playing. All I came up with was that I've replaced the mindless watching of TV to MMO's and that it's as good/bad waste of time as TV. Instead of watching good stories I 'act' in decent ideas of stories.

Maybe more on that later.

Play nice!

C out

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Wasting the little time I have (YAWP)

I'm wasting the short time I have for the Old World Loremaster achievements. Currently I'm on the Kalimdor side and had the pleasure to waste around 5-6 hours to them over the weekend. The rest of the whole Saturday I spent playing other toons for a reason or another.

The one I'm currently most fond of is my banker Druid, who is of Restoration spec. I have ceased to do any quests with this toon and while I'm waiting for the random dungeon, I try to get his herbalism up to the dungeon level. Which is impossible because there seems to be constant need for healers in the dungeons. I have about one minute to get into a dungeon, barely enough to spot the next herb node.

I've now been doing that from lv29 upwards, and over the weekend I got him to lv42. What I've noticed so far is that there are awfully lot people -especially tank classes- who haven't ever visited the instances they get into via the LFD now. Also the intolerance of other peoples' inabilities, poor play or lack of understanding grows the higher the level comes: I hadn't seen a single cuss fight before Uldaman nor anyone been kicked or leaving a group in progress. However, after lv40 - and opening of the Maraudon purple stones area - this seems to be a recurring thing.

Considering the quality of play and mastery of their class, no one is good enough to call others noobs or anything else derogatory at these levels. The spec and gear choices are very limited and neither contributes too much to the overall performance anyway: everyone levelling up by the dungeons only are submitted to the mercy of the loot distribution rng and the 'Satchet of Helpfull Goods' doesn't help at all by giving only melee gear to a spellcaster.

So loosen up people who are levelling through the LFD: The less you cuss and swear, the less you play and gain. Everyone makes mistakes and only one rogue has had the guts to call me a noob as a healer after the tank ran off out of my LoS and caused a wipe. Granted, that rogue was brought back to earth after that and he left after hearing that he won't be healed unless he starts to take care of himself. By the tank, mind you!

I mentioned that Satched of Helpfull Goods. Someone in Blizzard forgot to change the settings of that, because it's offering me different grades of perfectly viable Feral Druid gear all the time. They have forgotten that they changed the talent system and made every spec viable for levelling, thus making the spell caster druid specs more numerous than the feral ones. Hello! I'd like to have at least one piece of usable gear from the satchet! I have now dual spec for Resto/Balance and I'm doing well in one gear.

So I dps'd both normal and heroic HoR the other day. Arms is VERY viable in dps: being at the top of the heroic HoR just showed me that my ragtag gear set and mediocre understanding of the class can save the day. For me to wait for the rage to build up enough to use skills - or have them all on cd and wait for that - is too slow in a way. But that's what playing warrior is nowadays, from what I've gathered this is the case with more or less any class there is. The slower pace makes the game 'easier' in a way, but feels sluggish.

All in all, I wasted the best of the weekend doing everything else than questing for the achievement. Now standing at 483/700, having about 15 quests to drop off and I'm still in Ashenvale. I have huge areas with tens of quests, the only thing is to choose the right one and get next 50 or so done in a breeze.

What has amazed me is the fact that there are so many quests you can find only by exploring and how many of those I have passed earlier due one reason or another. Also the quality of the quest chains is much higher than I remembered, though there are only few and between of those which really bring more to the lush graphic presentation of the world.

So many to go. So much to choose from. So little time.

C out
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Startling discoveries (YAWP)

This weekend was a bit of a disappointment, not only because my objective with the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdom proves to be more time consuming than I thought, but also due to real life coming into the way of reaching it. Still lacking some 27 quests from the achievement, and then it's about 300 quest in Kalimdor. Kalimdor should be easier due to the fact that there are big quest areas which I haven't even tapped yet (like Sillithus and Tanaris) and the questing should be more condensed. Then again, kill ten rats kind of quests take their time anyhow, like in Eastern Kingdoms.

What has been an eye opener on the Old World questing (startling discovery #1) is that the most interesting quests and quest chains begin either from a random drop or from a quest giver who either appears randomly or requires certain attributes or circumstances to give the quest to you. One such questline is in Stranglethorn Valley on Alliance side. There is this soldier who will go on patrol and if you save him from being killed by the warriors from the Kurtz army, he'll give you the quest starting a chain of 5 quests (six quests for the achievement, actually). But only if you happen to be around when he gets attacked!

I waited for the bugger to start walking for 42 minutes, and the quest chain was done in 10. Wasted time when you compare to the normal quest in which you have to kill, say 30 Ogres in the Searing Gorge: that killing quest takes about 15 minutes and you get to do another quest on the side.

Of course, the low level questing is pretty boring if you really aren't for it, and for me all the waiting and flying took it's toll also. So I ran the Headless Horseman and a heroic with all my 80's toons. With my spriest I met the most incredible fury warrior I've seen so far (startling discovery #2). This warrior banged constant damage of five figures in Drak'Tharon Keep and boasted for having done over 16k crits on Lady Deathwhisper couple of nights earlier. My recount had 9880 for his dps over the whole instance, with crits over 12k.

At the other end of the scale, as I was running Culling of Stratholme with my baby DK in his Unholy, I could come up with 3.2k. The startling discovery #3 was as follows. I got in there just before the gauntlet after the inn. The tank ran on as I came in, and we cleared the gauntlet. At the same time as I came in, came a mage and we took care of the dps part of the run. So we cleared the gauntlet, came to the end of it and started to wait for Arthas to join us. We waited. And waited. And... this mage asked if anyone had talked to Arthas before we started. "Oh, I didn't know, I'm here for the first time", responded the tank.

Sure as can be, his gear were quest blues and greens and he was tanking in heroic Culling of Stratholme. No wonder the dps had left after the inn, fearing they would fail in the gauntlet.

The funny part of this? We had to clear the gauntlet three times. First to get through it, second to get back and third to get through it with Arthas. And for the majority of the run, I was tanking more than this 'tank to be' who really knew the basics but sure as hell couldn't handle the aggro. The healer paladin was a professional, though, and he switched to healing mainly my DK instead of the tank. 

Malganis was our puppy and I scored some 6k crits in there. (Startling discovery #4)

To cap this all, I got finally switched my banker druid's profession from skinning to herbalism. As I started to pick it up with the herb collecting, I made the final startling discovery: I got experience from using the skill?!

Come Cataclysm, I think I could make a Worgen priest or a druid and make the pacifist levelling thing, only healing in random dungeons LFD style and picking flowers!!

As the final note: I think I have to take a bit more serious approach into the blog, as Kadomi from Tank Like A Girl (one of my big influences) has put this blog into her list of warrior blogs. I'll take the protection and arms route, but more of that later. I have ideas already, but do not expect any real number crunching. Most probably more on the routes on how I find things and how they work for me.

Cheers!

C out

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The truth comes out of an infants mouth (YAWP)

Not exactly an infant, naturally, but a small kid. In this case my youngest son, 9 years, who got the luxury of playing his DK on Sunday while I was first having a nice jog and then a long walkie with one of the dogs.

His DK was lv60 when we got his UI set up and I left. When I returned half an hour later, he had gotten almost one level more, without problems in the quests and was already stating that the game feels easy. After another hour and a half the DK was lv62, my son had needed help with only two quests and he was convinced that the game was easier, his unholy DK was a brutal killing machine and the mobs in Hellfire Peninsula gave more exp than earlier.

Who am I to agree? The truth in this case came from the mouth of a young gamer who knows neigh English, plays a game which he shouldn't even touch and who has earlier - before patch 4.0.1. - been suffering from utter difficulties with the levelling process.

I also confess that I did the unthinkable and installed Carbonite once again. Only to rationalize my Loremaster project, that is. And I have to say I was very, very pleasantly surprised after I got it running on my machine. Gone is the heavy and straining memory usage, the addon works fluidly and the new additions are pretty nice, too. Partly with the help of it I finished the Grizzly Hills loremaster part in a breeze, and still had time to read the quests.

Next stop Zul'Drak and then it's all Old World till either I finish the Loremaster or Cataclysm hits. I have already made a decision that I will queue for randoms only as a dps on my warrior, as this gives me a bit time to do quests on the side. I did tank only one boss over the weekend, all the rest of the few randoms I was dps.

Like someone commented earlier in Twitter: Why bother with the gearing if I'm not raiding?

C out
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Weekend sidecracking (YAWP)

This weekend was fully dedicated to 4.0.1. changes. My main characters got their new talents, most of them -at least the main ones- got their glyphs, too, and two of them got their gear reforged. As far as I can tell, I didn't have to do anything on the gem side, as there was next to no changes in my needs for gemmed stats. Ok, my baby DK could use some hit rating to get it capped, but that's more a question of getting enough Justice points and reasonable gear to begin with: his weapon is still green and gear a mix of green-blue-purple.

I tanked once. Shocking experience. A blast -literally- through Utgarde Pinnacle, with several multi-mob pulls which people have gotten used to AoE through. Guess can the current protection warrior hold that kind of pulls easily anymore, especially when you consider the increase of DPS damage the clothies are enjoying?

Like I said, it was a shocking experience, but nothing much changed on my starter: Charge - Thundeclap - step back/side/more condensed spot - Shockwave - Cleave - Thunderclap and start cracking Shield Slams, Devastates and occasional Revenges into the mix. Oh, and with Incite talent, Heroic Strike whenever the rage gave chance. More or less with those we went and the result was a pretty enjoyable, though hectic, run. It felt like I had more to do and really had to work from time to time to keep the mage and warlock alive.

On my shadowpriest I got a nice surprise: after talents, glyphs and reforging, my raw dps on normal 80 dummy rose from 3.5k to 4.6k without a problem, and the effect from changing to elite dummy was mere 200 dps! After reforging my gear still has loads of extra hit in it, but this may well change when I get enough Justice Points to get myself a real DPS gear instead of this healer-dps mix I have gotten myself into. In the guild hc I ranked nicely to the second place in ICC25 geared people, so no problems (especially now that Event Horizon works!).

My baby DK feels awkward and I think the changes felt most in his performance. Still, I'm not at the bottom of the DPS and I could easily patch the misses of a pally tank in VH, saving our sad behinds time and again when he missed a mob or just took the wrong turn to the portal. With all that ICC level gear he should have known VH like the back of his hands... must have had a baaad day. 

But my pride and joy is my banker druid. At the tender level of 29 he was plunged into 4.0.1. and changed from balance to restoration. And I can undersign each, every and all comments stating that druid healing has become fun. Simple and fun from the low levels on (have to try that on my horde druid, who is balance by main). Though I have to agree with other bloggers who have stated that the LFD instances while levelling have been nerfed to the ground: only the bear tank in Scarlet Monastery caused me problems due to taking in so much burst damage from time to time, otherwise the tank classes self-healing capabilities are incredible. The warrior tanks (both protection and arms, even a fury tanked once!) I have had I have been able to nuke the mobs all along the way. Their self-heals just keep them popping from 50% to full without a thought. But it is fun to run around, keep HoT's on the tanks and tackle the other healing issues along the way.

The only one I had issues with is my baby mage on Horde side. At level 30 she doesn't get much talents and I just couldn't get hang of the fire spells and rotations on one run. I'm only wondering how the ones I ran Scarlet Monastery with my druid could pull the damage they did, but alas, I didn't pay attention to their specs or spells at all.

And yes. Copra is alive again. Boomkin is FUN! The new Eclipse mechanics make the class so much more fun to go than it was, and it is very, very rewarding to land those crits here and there.

All in all, weekend was a win. I even dabbled into the glyph market with very low level glyphs and scored some nice profits.

Now I have to go and play by the guidelines Spinks so generously put out. It's hard, but more fun now than it ever was. Even though it requires some change in mentality from all in a group.

Tanking, that is.

C out

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It finally dawned on me (yawp)

One raid, a couple of heroics and it came to me.

I'm next to no good as tank or dps and definitely not suitable for healing. I better stick to what I enjoy doing in the game, that being running the quests and reading the stories. I'm not up to raiding as it is, because I just don't master the classes I play well enough to contribute and so on.

Not really. It finally dawned on me how much gear really means in the final contribution to the group. In the last ICC25 I joined on my Arms dps spec I did pretty well. Or at least I thought I did, but then I saw the World of Logs numbers and started to weep. Lowest of the dps, just barely more than the tanks.

At the other end of the spectrum, I ran a couple of heroics and one normal on my baby dk, still partly in greens and just earned his first purple from the normal ToC5. The dps is inadequate, really, but still he's gear supports the role to a point that he's contributing, way more than my warrior to his.

The general difficulty of my warrior is the lack of gear in general. In the 25 man I am comparing to a group of full tier9 and above, where his gear is barely touching the tier9 level. The difference is immense: compare average gear level of 232 to 251 and you see it. Put that high end even higher and you are where my warrior is.

To conclude, that is the end. Patch 4.0.1 is bound to come soon, so no more of this end game sucks because its only gearing grind rhyme. It's going to be more on the omg the talents suck/rule/whatever from here to Cata.
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No play (YAWP)

It's a bugger to have a life, you know. All time goes to commuting, work, kids and hobbies. Games -as strange as it may seem- take the backburner seat in my schedule when things start to get hectic.

That's what has happened lately. I had plans on doing clever posts, but got struck with severe case of life instead. Over the last weekend I played one CrossFire daily, and that's all. Didn't have even stamina to login to WoW to see my AH sales break new records.

Like I tweeted a moment ago:

All work, no play, makes a blog a very dry and uneventful place.

Sorry for that. Life just happens.
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